The Hungry Crafter

Has it been a month already? Really? How did that happen? I’m going to chalk it up to “Time flies when you’re having fun” and leave it at that. It’s a much nicer way of looking at it compared to other alternatives.

So what have I been doing? I can’t say that I have lots of fun completed crafts to show you, or even lots of delicious food pics. (I could potentially show pics of my slowly expanding stomach, but I’ll spare you). So instead, let’s take an honest look at what I’ve actually done with the past month of my life, starting with time thief number one…

Reading: Lots and lots of reading. No wonderful novels, or even summer fluff novels (which I generally can’t stand anyway), but BLOGS. Wow, is it obsessive once you get into it. I finally settled on using Google reader to follow all of my blogs, and am now up to a count of 58 blogs that I follow daily (need to update my sidebar one of these days). I’ve got a great little app on my Droid that lets me follow my reader there, so I generally catch up on my reading during the 2 hours I spend commuting each weekday. And there’s still computer time required to keep up to date on reading, leave comments, bookmark projects I’d like to try, fabrics to buy (more on that later), giveaways to enter…and so it goes.

Then there’s the magazines: Bon Appetit, Cooking Light, Cook’s Illustrated, Saveur, Food & Wine, National Geographic, Fitness, ReadyMade, & Smithsonian. Recipes I want to try get dog-eared as I read through (see 2 hour commute comment), then the index pages get pulled out, marked up, and filed in my recipe index binder, and the magazine gets filed. My current backlog is about 1.5 feet high.

And finally, there’s the craft books. Interweave had a “hurt book” sale last month, with unreal prices on slightly damaged books (must say, I didn’t notice a thing wrong with them when they arrived), so these three lovelies got added to my collection:

I Love Patchwork! 21 Irresistible Zakka Projects to Sew by Rashida Coleman-Hale

Customizing Cool Clothes: From Dull to Divine in 30 Projects by Kate Haxell

Printmaking + Mixed Media: Simple Techniques and Projects for Paper and Fabric by Dorit Elisha

I’ve also discovered that the Boston Public Library has quite the selection of craft books, and am currently making my way through the following list:

• The Crafter Culture Handbook by Amy Spencer
• The Handmade Marketplace by Kari Chapin
• Pretty Little Presents by Valerie Van Shrader
• Sewing with an Overlock Singer sewing reference library
• Super Crafty: over 75 amazing how-to projects by Susan Beal

So far, Pretty Little Presents is on my “to buy” list, Super Crafty is already back at the library, and The Handmade Marketplace is being toted around in my bag like a good luck charm.

Throw in the daily e-mail and Facebook checks, and well, it all adds up to more reading than I realized. And that’s just the beginning of things I find to waste time with! Come back tomorrow for the next time stealer of the summer: Shopping for fabric. Beautiful pics included for free! How kind of me.